You can only progress so far

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In most walks of life, things keep changing, but that does not mean progress is being made. | WEB

For some time now, men and women who think of
themselves as progressives or, in the United States,
as “liberals,” have been wondering what they should
do next. Those who really believe in the principles
they swear by know that large parts of the world
could do with some thoroughgoing reforms, but
because they have been taught that no culture is
superior to any other they are reluctant to impose their own
values by denouncing barbaric practices such as slavery in countries where they are still routine. For that reason, most limit
themselves to fighting what they think is injustice in Western
lands, where many of the goals their counterparts
of previous generations aimed at have already
been reached, while others have turned out to be
far more elusive than had been imagined.

But believers in open-ended progress cannot
just sit back and call it a day. They have to keep
going, which is why so many have taken up “identity politics”; instead of aspiring to refashion the
society they live in, in the hope of making it more
egalitarian and removing any remaining vestiges
of an unhappy past, they can concentrate on the
grievances of groups whose spokespeople say they are fed up
with being mistreated by a shadowy privileged power elite. As
there will never be a shortage of “minorities” who would like a
better deal, “identity politics” should keep progressives in business for a long time to come.

In the English-speaking countries and, to a lesser extent, in other
parts of the world, the Left – whose leaders assume they are in
charge of the progressive project – is redefining itself. Not that
long ago, socialists were against large-scale immigration because
it harmed the local workers and was supported by businessmen;
now, in the US at least, young-ish politicians who say they are
socialists are all for it. They have also taken to making common
cause with militant Islamists who, by traditional left-wing standards, must surely be counted among the most reactionary, and
therefore “right-wing,” people on the face of the earth.

Is this progress? In most walks of life, things keep changing,
but that does not mean progress is being made. Are European
societies really more “advanced” than they were 50 years ago? You
could argue that in many important ways they have been going
backwards, becoming more rigid and class-bound.

However, there is one noteworthy field in which progress is
undeniable: science. Despite the propensity of some practitioners
to believe wholeheartedly in mistaken theories and then waste
their lives looking for hard evidence to prove
they were right all along – as did Stalin’s pet
biologist Trofim Lysenko, whose hostility to
“reactionary” Mendelian genetics did immense harm to Soviet agriculture – science, closely
followed by technology really does progress.

We know far more about the material universe than we did 50 years ago, let alone several
centuries ago and, as we are frequently reminded, a cheap smartphone has more computational power than everything NASA had in
1969 when it put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon.

It was thanks to the scientists that the idea of progress captured the Western imagination. Suitably impressed by their achievements, bright people began to assume they could emulate them
in literature, music, painting, sculpture, sociology, psychology,
politics and just about everything else. Avant-garde experimentation came into fashion. It is still with us. Few thought poets who
sprinkled words on a page or made their musings edgier by a
liberal use of obscenities improved on Homer, but for much of
the cultural establishment, being suitably “modern” was more
than enough to make their offerings seem more relevant.

Painters and sculptors also want to progress.
Instead of replacing traditional standards by
equally exacting modern ones, influential artists
and critics decided that hierarchies were bad and
it was a waste of time to try and explain why something by Michelangelo ranked higher than a
haphazard collection of blobs; their rejection of
anything smacking of effort allowed politically
savvy pranksters to make a killing by getting
investors – who know that Impressionist works
that once went for a couple of pounds will now
fetch enough to make you enviably rich – to pay millions for something quickly made from scrap metal or even elephant dung.
Musicians got into the game by inventing atonal languages; unfortunately for them, only a tiny minority preferred their products
to those of hopelessly outdated composers such as Mozart.

In the scientific world, progress will continue to be made, which
is not necessarily a good thing, but elsewhere it has stalled. Can
politicians and the people who feed them with ideas continue to
push society onwards and, presumably, upwards in their quest for
utopia? For a short while in the second half of the 19th century, it
seemed they could, as many reforms did have a clearly positive
effect on people’s lives. But then things started to go terribly wrong.

For generations, many highly intelligent people who wanted to
leave the benighted past behind thought totalitarian movements
had the answer: their attempts at social engineering and the wars
they undertook saw hundreds of millions of people die a miserable death, but that was not enough to kill the belief that, somehow
or other, society should keep moving ahead by embracing whatever looks new.

Environmentalism, which these days entails letting nature have
the final say, is also in favour in left-wing circles. Some would be
more than happy to see industry grind to a halt if it helped slow
climate change yet the consequences for millions of workers and
for many eco-warriors would be catastrophic. Would closing down
all those coal mines, dirty factories and dairy farms – apparently,
bovine flatulence releases more noxious gases than motor vehicles spew out – make the weather friendlier? Perhaps it would not,
but progressives who until quite recently took it for granted that
if they ran things they could create societies that were far better
than the ones that already existed, have come to the conclusion
that, as humankind was responsible for the planet’s ills, they
themselves should stop breeding. As a result, birth-rates in places
where progressives abound tend to be far lower than in those
inhabited by throwbacks who cling to antiquated beliefs.